Slideshow for the fourteenth lecture in my summer course, English 10, "Introduction to Literary Studies: Deception, Dishonesty, Bullshit." http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/m15/

1. Lecture 14: “To speke
of wo that is in
mariage”*
PATRICK MOONEY, M.A.
ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A
14 JULY 2105
* Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” in The Canterbury Tales

2. Sylvia Plath
(1932–1963)
●
Best known for two collections
of poetry published during her
lifetime, The Colossus and
Other Poems and Ariel.
– Also authored short stories
and one novel, The Bell Jar.
●
Studied at Smith College and
the University of Cambridge.
●
Married Cambridge poet Ted
Hughes, 16 June 1956;
separated September 1962.
●
Primarily known as a
“confessional” poet …

3. “
”
Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” and Sylvia Plath’s “Lady
Lazarus” were true examples [of confessional
poetry] because they put the speaker at the center
of the poem in such a way as to make his
psychological vulnerability and shame an
embodiment of his civilization. . . . [A] genuine
confessional poem has to be superbly successful
artistically if it is to achieve this fusion of the
private and the culturally symbolic, but it must at
any rate be far more highly charged than the usual
poem.
M.L. Rosenthal on “confessional” poetry
(1967)

4. “Daddy” (October 12, 1962)
Otto Plath in 1930
In the German tongue, in the Polish town,
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Pollack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

5. Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
Scaling little ladders with gluepots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
“The Colossus”

6. Edward “Ted”
Hughes
(1930–1998)
●
Degree in anthropology and
archaeology, Pembroke College, 1951.
●
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom,
1984–1998.
– But only after Philip Larkin
declined.
●
Began an affair with Assia Weevil,
summer 1962; separated from Plath,
September 1962.
●
Publisher (including of Seamus
Heaney, week 6); also known for his
poetry and fiction for children.
●
Received death threats for several
decades after Plath’s suicide.

7. “
”
What is theory the theory of?
I went to this little celebration and that's
actually where we met... Then we saw a
great deal of each other. Ted came
back to Cambridge and suddenly we
found ourselves getting married a few
months later... We kept writing poems
to each other. Then it just grew out of
that, I guess, a feeling that we both
were writing so much and having such
a fine time doing it, we decided that this
should keep on.
Plath in a 1961 BBC radio interview

8. Your worst dream
Came true: that ring on the door-bell –
Not a simple chance in a billion
But a meteorite, straight down our chimney,
With our name on it.
[….......................................................]
‘And for you,’ you said to me, ‘permission
To remember this dream. And think about it.’
– “A Dream”

9. Your worship needed a god.
Where it lacked one, it found one.
Ordinary jocks became gods –
Deified by your infatuation
That seemed to have been designed at birth for a god.
It was a godseeker. A god-finder.
Your Daddy had been aiming you at God.
When his death touched the trigger.
“The Shot”

10. The photo of Otto Plath (slide 3) is likely still under copyright, but I
believe the use of a low-resolution version in an educational
context to illustrate a relevant poem by his daughter that mentions
that very photo qualifies as “fair use” under a rationale similar to that
mentioned by the Wikimedia Foundation. More details available at
the original source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Otto_Plath_in_Front_of_a_B
lackboard_in_1930.gif
Media credits